How to Look for Weak Lines & Strong Plays

Sports betting can be characterized as a ducking and weaving hobby. Based on its consistency in inducing rapid heart beats and fist pounding game after game, along with a string of emotional highs and lows on behalf of the bettor, it should be a sport as well! Everyone knows that sportsbooks and oddsmakers exist for one reason: to help you lose. However, many of them could be caught sleeping with their release of questionable ¨strong plays and weak lines¨ Often times, their lines are too good to be true. In order to wager successfully, bettors must take advantage and capitalize on a weak line and a strong play.

Weak lines are the box of chocolates of the sportsbook industry. With a weak line, every bettor is quick to capitalize and salivate over his ¨lock¨ earnings. In essence, sportsbooks pay too much attention to statistical data and not sports behavior. What is sports behavior? For starters, sports behavior is the tendencies of teams to win/lose based on their situation. For example, the New York Knicks are a notoriously bad road team. On the road, racking up losses is like daily morning coffee - often and frequent. Although they have the capacity to blow out teams at home, a road loss seems inevitable against the premier teams in the league. Sometimes, sportsbooks make the mistake of pitting poor performing teams as a home underdog. The spread numbers can be inflated (i.e. New York Knicks as a +9 home underdog against the better San Antonio Spurs.) Here, sportsbooks fail to take into consideration the Knick´s respectable home record. Couple in the fact that the Spurs might be a 9-15 on the road (despite their winning record) and you see clear value here. In this relatively strong play, sportsbooks failed to recognize the situation and relied too much on statistical data. Keep in mind, the oddsmakers disadvantage is your advantage.

Another strong play might be rematch situations between two teams. In the previous game, the Cincinnati Bengals (a notoriously bad football team) might´ve blown out the high octane New York Jets by 21 points. In a glaring mistake, linesmakers might set the line at Bengals -4. Perhaps you´ve performed additional research and found out that the Jets star linesman is back from a holdout - wouldn´t this line be even more glaring? Add into this the ¨revenge¨ factor and you might´ve hit the jackpot.

Consider games of the past to determine your smart wager. Suppose your favorite Detroit Pistons blew out the Phoenix Suns on the road last game. Now, the Detroit Pistons are set as a home favorite at a measly -2. Common sense dictates that professional sports teams almost always perform better at home throughout the course of a season. Does this look like a strong play or a weak play? From one sports bettor to another, my favorite betting gimmick is the OVER/UNDER. In wagering on over/under football games, I take weather conditions into consideration. Is the field soggy and wet after a hail of rainstorms during the past week? Is it going to rain during the game? If the over is set ridiculously high (for instance, an OVER of 67 points for a Purdue Boilermaker/Ohio Buckeye NCAA game), wouldn´t you snuggle on your coach knowing the UNDER is a strong possibility here? A passing game would be extremely difficult under rain conditions, limiting the amount of catches to wide receivers and reducing overall scoring. Capitalize and take advantage of the weak lines out there. Sometimes, linesmakers ignore the dynamics of the situation and focus on raw statistical data and win-loss records, creating opportunity for the ¨look-outers.¨ The LVSC have to create lines for hundreds of professional and college games daily - maybe they made a mistake on this one so jump on every opportunity when it happens!